Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Cthulhu Weimar: Brains

Cast of Characters:
Doctor Karl A. Schwarz - physician who works at the Krankenhaus Moabit and who has a surgery on the side in Berlin Wedding (a district known for being a stronghold of the Communist Party and for being populated almost exclusively by working class people)
Gero Thalmann - a student from a middle-class family who plans to become an architect. Meanwhile, he's involved with the Communists and has taken an interest in the pressing social issues of the time. He has been living in Berlin for about a year.

Tuesday, 30th May 1921

Schwarz and Gero meet at the Nasses Dreieck where they find their contact, Franz, a distinguished-looking gentleman who’s rather out of place in this dive. They introduce themselves with the calling cards they got from the Society of Leopold and Franz accepts them. Their job will be to guard a delivery, some crates that must be brought to the Westhafen and loaded there on the MS Elyria. Schwarz notices that Franz has a scar, mostly hidden by his hairline, arching across his brow.

At the hospital, Schwarz checks in quickly before he leaves for the two weeks of vacation the Society has arranged. His boss tries to get him to take a look at a body – someone who fell victim to an accident, but the really curious thing is that the man had no brain. Someone seems to have removed it and yet, the man lived. But Schwarz has other things on his mind right now and doesn't really believe that wild story anyway.
They go to the meeting point where Franz told them to show up. There are four other men guarding the crates, among them the leader of the men who attacked Hillmann’s parents, who doesn’t seem to recognize them and who has now the same scar as Franz. Halfway to the port, the cart is stopped by two policemen walking their beat. They ask to see the contents of the crate. The first policeman is shot by the man with the scarred face, Schwarz attacks the other one to knock him unconscious, but he fails and the policeman is shot as well.

With the cart on its way again, Schwarz offers a flask to the men, spiked with castor oil. Only one of them drinks and is left behind when the oil takes effect not much later. At the pier, the captain of the Elyria and the scarface talk to each other and their eyes start to glow green. It seems that the captain loses his shape for a moment and turns into something incomprehensible. Schwarz and Gero use that moment to attack the last two men guarding the crates, take one of the crates and run. From behind them come a bright green light and a shrill sound that hurts their ears. The two men from the Society of Leopold who have waited hidden to help run towards them, but stop dead in their tracks and stare at whatever is coming at them from the ship. The sound paralyses them and Schwarz who drops to his knees. Gero abandons the crate, pulls Schwarz to his feet and throws his stun grenade behind him without looking back.

It explodes and then everything goes silent and dark again. When Gero slowly turns around, he finds that the two men they knocked out and the carthorse are dead. The MS Elyria is completely gone. The only thing left is a big tin can that rolls towards Gero. He picks it up, it seems to be filled with some kind of liquid sloshing around inside. The can is labeled with ‘A. Hitler’ – a name Gero knows because he read up on the Nazis. Reuschner, their contact at the Society of Leopold, arrives and Gero gives him the tin. Neither he nor Schwarz accept the reward Reuschner offers them, they just make it clear that they want nothing further to do with the Society. But they both agree that it’s worth investigaing why exactly the Nazis are carrying around the brain of their leader in a tin can.

I have this feeling that when these characters die, it's because they have pissed off the Society of Leopold, who are not the right people to cross. But right now, they look, to Schwarz and Gero at least, like a threat to society. And the Nazis - what's the deal with them? In 1921, they were not all that widely known yet, so why is the Society so interested in them? Not to mention brain in tin cans. That is wonderful pulp and the Cthulhu mythos very much has its roots there.

Next time, we'll be adding another player and we're back to our usual Cthulhu group, I'm looking forward to that. And I really want to see how Gero and Schwarz get along with the new character. Especially when they start to talk about all the things they have seen in the last months.